"Auctoritee" Versus "Experience"

Shadowed by The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, Chaueer's dreampoetry has not received the attention it deserves. However, if criticism is conductedfrom the perspectives of modem realism and romanticism, it is inevitable that hisdream poems be seen as a footnote to the two great "classics." This dissertationapproaches Chaucer's dream poetry by a typically medieval topos of "auctoritee" vs."experience." Regarding the medieval dream vision tradition, courtly culture, books,and medieval rhetoric as different authorities, this dissertation studies Chaucer'sefforts to reconcile "auctoritee" with "experience."Besides an introduction and a conclusion, this dissertation has four chapters. Theintroduction presents a literature review, the thesis of the dissertation and theapproach of the study.Chapterâ… studies Chaucer's dream poetry and the medieval dream visiontradition. To write in the dream vision tradition means both the constraints of a set ofconventions and topoi and the opporttmities of subject variety and narrativesophistication. Well-versed in ancient dream narratives and dream theories, Chaucerdoes not go out of his way to transcend the conventionalism, but plays with differentnarrative levels to include in his dream poems various subjects with contemporaryinterest such as love, fame, poetry and fortune.Chapterâ…¡is concerned about the courtly culture in Chaucer's dream poetry.Closely connected with the English court dominated by French literature and culture,Chaucer reflects the influence of courtly culture in his dream poetry, which is actuallyan English extension of French love visions. As a court poet, he writes about courtlylove. As one from the rising London middle class, he also inspects the aristocraticideal from a new perspective.Chapterâ…¢deals with the books as "auctoritee." As a medieval poet, Chaucer isready to admit the "auctoritee" of books. His narrators are all love poets who are devoted to reading but lack experience in love. Books are made to be one of thefactors of dream frame, which constitutes the complex narrative structure of"experience-book-dream." Chaucer's dream poetry does not represent life experience;instead, Chaucer constructs a world of books by materials from "auctors" throughtranslation and adaptation.Chapterâ…£centers on the poetic art of Chaucer's dream poetry. Chaucerachieves remarkable artistic sophistication in his dream poetry because he realizes thegenre's inherent rhetorical potential and takes advantage of the rhetorical principleselaborated on in medieval poetics. While medieval poetics seldom touches uponquestions such as the nature of poetry, Chaucer does some critical thinking in hisdream poems on literature and reality, intention and interpretation, fictionality ofliterature and the status of poets. The conclusion gives a summary of the dissertation and emphasizes theimportance of Chaucer's dream poetry.